Measuring national economic resilience to the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics

The SARS and COVID-19 pandemics represent the two largest economic shocks to human society in the past two decades. This paper investigates national economic resilience to these pandemics while 25 countries (region) and 46 countries are involved in the two studies, respectively. The study uses year-over-year quarterly economic growth data to measure the national economic resistance and economic recoverability in the recession-recovery cycles caused by the pandemics. The results show that: (i) the two pandemics caused evident economic fluctuations; (ii) there exists a negative relationship between economic resistance and economic recoverability across those infected countries; (iii) the typology of national economic resilience has shifted from weak resistance-good recoverability during the SARS period to good resistance-weak recoverability in the recent years of COVID-19; (iv) big variations of national economic policy response to the pandemic are found between high-income and middle-income countries. We call for building a more resilient world where sustainable and inclusive growth dominates the development pattern in the future.